A new report from Mercy Corps, an NGO, has warned that Kabul, Afghanistan could be the first modern city in the world to run out of water. The city is nearing a tipping point, the report said, with water extraction far exceeding the rate of natural recharge and extensive water contamination problems for what limited water is available.
According to Mercy Corps, Kabul is facing a water crisis that endangers the 6 million people living there. The city’s aquifers have declined by 25 to 30 meters over the past 10 years, and annual groundwater extraction surpasses the natural recharge rate by 44 million cubic meters every year.
Already, UNICEF and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) have predicted that Kabul’s groundwater could be depleted by 2030, 8AM Media reported. Further, the UN previously forecasted that almost half of the city’s boreholes have already been depleted, eliminating access to a primary source of drinking water.
Mercy Corps found that some households in Kabul spend up to 30% of their total income on securing water.
In addition to rapid population expansion, which increased from 1 million residents in Kabul in 2001 to 6 million as of 2025, climate change has also severely limited water access in the city. According to the report, Afghanistan experienced a long drought from 2021 to 2024, with the country receiving only 40% to 60% of average winter precipitation in the winter of 2023 to 2024. As snow in the Hindu Kush mountain range declines with global warming, it is even more difficult for the aquifers to recharge.
With what water is available, the report noted that 80% is contaminated with chemicals, sewage and other toxins.
“Afghanistan is facing a lot of problems, but this water scarcity is one of the hardest,” Nazifa, a teacher living Kabul, told The Guardian. “Every household is facing difficulty, especially those with low income. Adequate, good quality well water just doesn’t exist.”
Other challenges include inadequate infrastructure, poor regulations to control contamination, private water companies inflating water costs and frozen or dismantled international funding sources.
As The Guardian reported, UN partners received only $8.4 million out of the $264 million needed for water and sanitation projects in Afghanistan. Additionally, $3 billion in international Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) funding has been frozen since 2021, and the current U.S. administration’s cuts to United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding have also damaged WASH efforts in Kabul.
“Kabul’s water crisis represents a failure of governance, humanitarian coordination, water regulation, and infrastructure planning,” Mercy Corps wrote in its report. “It is also a harbinger of climate-driven urban collapse, and the coming decade demands an unprecedented effort to increase Kabul’s aquifer recharge and political solutions to revive frozen aid pipelines. Without immediate intervention, the city risks becoming the first modern capital in the world to fully deplete its water reserves — a disaster with far reaching humanitarian, political, and economic implications.”
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